Pokémon was the game I grew up with.

As a child, I owned Pokémon Yellow and Gold for Game Boy Color; and as a teen, I used emulators to play a lot of the third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation games.

Back in October 2012, I streamed myself playing Pokémon White 2, and sometime around that year, I streamed a bit of PokéMMO. However, since then, I’ve been quiet with Pokémon, and haven’t broadcasted anything related to Pokémon since then.

Over time, I’ve had a few people ask me why I don’t play Pokémon anymore, wondering if I got bored of it. Recently, someone asked if I had grown out of Pokémon. Because this person was clearly mistaken, as Pokémon isn’t something that you simply outgrow, I decided to address the core reason behind why I don’t stream Pokémon anymore.

As you know, I’m a multimedia content producer, and I integrate that into almost everything I do online. I look for opportunities to create more content and get more practice making videos and other online ma­te­ri­als. In the realm of gaming, I try my best to stream or make videos from my gaming footage.

Unfortunately, Nintendo is not explicitly okay with me using Pokémon to create my own content.

Companies like Blizzard and Riot Games clearly state on their website that it is permissible to use their games to create original gameplay content and monetize it through advertisements (which is why I play a lot of Hearthstone, Starcraft, Diablo, and League of Legends). Nintendo does not have such a policy – in fact, they have quite the opposite.

According to a statement made by Nintendo to GoNintendo.com:

“We became a YouTube partner and … registered our copyright content in the YouTube data­base. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos fea­tur­ing Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips.”

This means that, if I post Pokémon-related videos on YouTube to monetize off VODs of my stream, I may end up not getting my full share of revenue (if any at all). Nintendo doesn’t explicitly state what kind of content would be used for advertising, and what purpose these advertisements would serve – this makes the policy more cryptic and not worth the risk.

Sure, I enjoy playing Pokémon. But, I can put the time I spend potentially playing Pokémon into other games I enjoy playing that produces footage I know I can safely use to create content without having to worry about copyright issues.

In the future, if I end up becoming rich, then sure, I might dedicate some days into streaming Pokémon with the assumption that I’m not going to make money off of it and I’m doing it purely for the enjoyment. However, I’m not rich yet, and until I am, I will naturally want to gravitate towards games I know I can use to produce content safely.